Severe Disabilities Series

NASET’s Educating Children with Severe Disabilities Series

Introduction to Students with Severe Disabilities

NASET is proud to offer a new series devoted exclusively to students with severe disabilities. This series will cover all aspects of students with severe disabilities focusing especially on understanding this population and what skills and information are necessary if you are asked to teach this population of students. However, in order to understand who is included in this population we must first clarify several concepts, definitions, and foundational issues.

At the end of this series you should:

Understand concepts and definitions, prevalence, and causes of severe/profound disabilities.

Understand the legal rights of persons with severe/profound disabilities.

Have knowledge of curriculum based assessment and task analysis with children with severe disabilities.

Have knowledge of various public school and community agencies and the types of services they provide.

Have knowledge of the physical, cognitive, and learning characteristics of persons with severe/profound disabilities

Recognize the differences between key historical and current philosophies of services, curriculum, and instruction for students with profound disabilities.

Identify components of Individual Educational Plans for students with severe/profound disabilities and procedures for conducting person-centered planning..

Develop instructional strategies and tactics for teaching the acquisition of new behaviors and skills to students with severe/profound disabilities (i.e. prompting procedures, shaping, reinforcement schedules, materials adaptations, etc.).

Develop instructional strategies and tactics for teaching the generalization and maintenance of skills.

Identify major types of challenging behaviors and the appropriate use of positive behavioral support procedures.

Understand and use different forms and types of data collection including direct measures of behavior, anecdotal records, and portfolio development and assessment.

Develop skills for independently seeking information about educational and related services for students with profound disabilities.

Develop an awareness of assistive technology options for students with severe disabilities

As you progress through this series, you will be presented with principles, foundations, classroom management techniques and other practical factors for working with students with severe disabilities.